Apple Proposed Buying Time Warner Last Year

Apple proposed buying Time Warner at a meeting with the owner of HBO, CNN, and Warner Brothers last year, reports the Financial Times. Apple SVP Eddy Cue brought up the possibility at a meeting late last year with Olaf Olafsson, the company's head of corporate strategy.

The meeting at the media group’s Manhattan headquarters had been arranged to discuss other commercial relationships between the two companies, such as the potential inclusion of Time Warner’s cable channels in a future Apple video streaming service.

The discussions never got beyond the preliminary stage and never included Apple CEO Tim Cook or the CEO of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes.

Apple is said to be interested in Time Warner's assets to help it launch a standalone streaming TV service. The company been struggling to create a skinny bundle of programming that it could offer to customers through its Apple TV and other devices.

It makes sense. Nintendo loses money on every Wii sold and they will never be able to compete with PlayStation and Xbox. Putting their games on an Apple TV would let them be in the same living room as their competitors without losing money on its console or even paying to support a console.